Hydroponic fodder production for dairy animals
Girish C E1, Asif Mohammad1, Amit Kumar Singh2*, Champak Bhakat2
1Dairy Extension Section
2Livestock Production Management Section
1, 2 ICAR-National Dairy Research Institute, Eastern Regional Station, Kalyani, India
*Corresponding author email: amitkumarsingh5496@gmail.com
Introduction
Indian agriculture is primarily depends on monsoon to carry out its production operations. Irregular and variability of monsoon due to climate change had been found to increase the risk of droughts. It creates water shortages, crop failure, and depletion of groundwater. It creates additional burden to the present deficit of green fodder in the country. The droughts have unexpected side effect on dairy production in India by effecting the fodder production in lean season. In this scenario, occurrences of drought seem to be a biggest challenge to meet the estimated milk production in future. Drought and its impact not only reduce the milk productivity but also affect the livelihood security of small and marginal farmers depended on dairy farming. Water scarcity and fodder deficit are the major challenges faced by the dairy farmers during drought situation. Therefore, innovative technologies like hydroponic fodder production are a need of an hour. Hydroponics helps drought-hit farmers reduce their reliance on water and continue to feed their livestock.
Hydroponic fodder production technique
Hydroponic fodder production is a technique of growing fodder without soil by using mineral solution in water medium. This technique efficiently increases the water use efficiency during drought and reduces the pressure of fodder deficit for dairy animals during drought situations. Fodder Plants require three things to flourish, water, nutrients, and sunlight. Hydroponics is a straight forward way of providing all these nutrients without the need of soil under controlled environment conditions to optimise the growth of plants.
Procedure to set- up hydroponic fodder system
Materials required: Hydroponic plastic trays, rack or stand keeping trays, water sprinkling set up or water sprayer, green house and shade cloth
Seeds suitable: Maize, wheat, rice, oats, barley, corn.
Temperature: Maintain temperature of 15º – 32 ºC and humidity of 70 -80% to avoid fungal growth.
Setting up of a hydroponic fodder system:
- Select the suitable site to set up green house with proper spacing and ventilation. It is better to select the site near to livestock shed to make operations easy.
- Inside the green house, build a bamboo rack or wooden rack to keep the fodder trays. Make three or four layers rack to make easy spray of water and remove of trays.
- Hydroponic fodder production required a medium-size tray of about 1.5 x 3 Ft. Trays must be made up of good quality plastic to hold the fodder’s weight. Make 15-20 small size holes in trays for draining any excess water.
- Maintain enough space between two layers to easily spray water. Make a little slope towards one side for each layer of the rack; this allows water to drain from the trays quickly.
- Construct a small drainage line under the slope side of a rack to properly drain out water.
Steps involved in growing hydroponic fodder
- Select suitable quality grains for hydroponic green fodder. Remove the dead and broken seeds and other impurities by soaking them in 5- 7 litres of warm water.
- Seeds should be washed with the solution of sodium hypochlorite and leave the grains for 30 minutes in the solution to avoid fungal production. After draining the grains, soak them in fresh water for a 24 hours.
- Drain the soaked seed from fresh water. Transfer this washed seed to a gunny bag and allow them to germinate for next 24 hours.
- Wash and clean the plastic trays and remove the blockages of holes.
- Transfer germinated seeds from the gunny bags to trays and evenly spread them, and places them on the rack.
- Sprinkle or spray the water frequently to sprouted seeds up to 7 days. Maintain the suitable temperature and proper ventilation.
- Do not disturb the trays till the fodder comes to harvest. After 7 days one tray containing one kilo of maize seeds can produce 7- 8 kilos of fodder.
Figure1: hydroponic fodder production process
Feeding of Hydroponic Green Fodder
- The fodder ready to harvest after seven days, remove fodder slabs from the tray and cut into small pieces before feeding it to the animals.
- Avoid the keeping the fodder for more than nine days as its nutrient value goes to decrease slowly.
- Feed the hydroponics with the roots at first, if the livestock does not take the fodder, combine it with other fodder before the livestock has become used to hydroponic fodder.
Advantages of hydroponic fodder production:
- High water use efficiency: Hydroponics requires 2-3 liters of water to produce 1kg of green fodder where as to conventional fodder production requires 60-75 liters
- Less space requirement: Hydroponics greenhouse requires marginal land of 10 meters X 5 meters land for 640 kg green fodder / day/ unit when compared to 1 hectare land for conventional fodder growing.
- Less labour requirement: Hydroponic system requires less labour work say 2-3 hours / day. It doesn’t include traditional management practices like weeding, sowing and irrigation.
- Short growing time: Hydroponic fodder requires just 1 week (7 days) to get nutritious fodder from seed germination to fully grown plant of 30 cm height.
- Year around production: Hydroponic fodder can be grown throughout the year irrespective of climate situation to meet the fodder demand for animals
- Organic fodder: Hydroponic fodder is free from the pesticides and insecticides and it is organic in nature.
- High nutrients: Hydroponic system provides highly nutritious fodder which is very much required for production and reproduction of livestock.
| Nutrients | Hydroponic fodder (Maize) |
| Protein | 13.59 |
| Ether Extract | 3.53 |
| Crude Fibre | 14.14 |
| Nitrogen Free Extract | 66.78 |
| Total Ash | 3.89 |
| Acid Insoluble Ash | 0.35 |
(Source: Indira et al., 2020)
Limitations: Like other technologies hydroponic fodder production also has certain limitations.
- High initial cost makes difficult for small and marginal farmers
- Careful monitoring of water borne diseases and temperature should be maintained
Conclusion:
Looking at the future challenges posed by drought on dairy sector, Proper management strategies during drought are highly crucial for sustaining the dairy farming. Adoption of innovative technologies like hydroponic fodder production would increase the water use efficiency and also provides green fodder for animals throughout the year.
